The following is a set of running notes that I made as I worked through this.

I checked through Makefile.PL: I had all prerequisites except for two. Math::Matrix installed without a hitch. The other, Test::CheckManifest, had a problem:

Running make test for RENEEB/Test-CheckManifest-1.42.tar.gz
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 "/home/ken/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.34.0/bin/perl
+.exe" "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-MTest::Harness" "-e" "undef *Test::
+Harness::Switches; test_harness(0, 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t t/
+extra/*.t t/xt/*.t
t/00_load.t ........................ ok
Bailout called.  Further testing stopped:  Cannot find a MANIFEST. Ple
+ase check!
FAILED--Further testing stopped: Cannot find a MANIFEST. Please check!
make: *** [Makefile:874: test_dynamic] Error 255
(/usr/bin/make test exited with 512)
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I've encountered that problem on a variety of platforms over a number of years. There was a report about this in rt-cpan; the tracker has been moved to github and I can't find the report. However, I do recall that discussions in that report lead to this in the doco: "Test::CheckManifest - REPLACE THIS MODULE". I've been using ExtUtils::Manifest ever since (for both personal and $work modules) without any problems. Also, ExtUtils::Manifest is a core module, so no CPAN installation necessary. You may want to consider making this change too. Anyway, I force-installed Test::CheckManifest to avoid problems with prerequisite testing: actual tests using this may still fail, but I'll worry about that down the track.

I manually made the changes you indicated for lib/Inline/CUDA.pm (from new code in github). Unfortunately, that didn't fix my reported problem:

$ perl Makefile.PL
Can't exec "/cygdrive/c/Program": No such file or directory at /home/k
+en/local/opt/perl/inline_cuda/perl-inline-cuda-master/lib/Inline/CUDA
+/Utils.pm line 182.
Inline::CUDA::Utils::find_dependencies (via N/A) : failed to find vers
+ion of /cygdrive/c/Program Files/NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit/CUDA/v1
+1.4/bin/nvcc with this command: /cygdrive/c/Program Files/NVIDIA GPU 
+Computing Toolkit/CUDA/v11.4/bin/nvcc --version
Makefile.PL : error, call to Inline::CUDA::Utils::find_dependencies() 
+has failed.
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I then made a manual change to Inline::CUDA::Utils::find_dependencies(). At line 181:

        #my $cmd = "${aexe} --version";
        my $cmd = "\Q${aexe}\E --version";
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A Makefile was successfully created:

$ perl Makefile.PL
find_dependencies() : report:
  cc : /usr/bin/cc
  cxx : /usr/bin/c++
  ld : /usr/bin/cc
  nvcc : /cygdrive/c/Program Files/NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit/CUDA/v
+11.4/bin/nvcc
  nvcc-release : 11.4
  nvcc-version : V11.4.48
  nvlink : /cygdrive/c/Program Files/NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit/CUDA
+/v11.4/bin/nvlink
  nvlink-release : 11.4
  nvlink-version : V11.4.48
Makefile.PL : configuration written to '/home/ken/local/opt/perl/inlin
+e_cuda/perl-inline-cuda-master/config/Inline-CUDA.conf'.
Generating a Unix-style Makefile
Writing Makefile for Inline::CUDA
Writing MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json
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No problems with make:

$ make
cp /home/ken/local/opt/perl/inline_cuda/perl-inline-cuda-master/config
+/Inline-CUDA.conf blib/lib/auto/share/dist/Inline-CUDA/Inline-CUDA.co
+nf
cp lib/Inline/CUDA/Utils.pm blib/lib/Inline/CUDA/Utils.pm
cp lib/Inline/CUDA.pm blib/lib/Inline/CUDA.pm
cp scripts/nvidia-ml-test.pl blib/script/nvidia-ml-test.pl
"/home/ken/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.34.0/bin/perl.exe" -MExtUtils::
+MY -e 'MY->fixin(shift)' -- blib/script/nvidia-ml-test.pl
Manifying 1 pod document
[download]

I did have problems with 'make test'. There was a huge amount of output: too much to post here and I don't have time to look through this closely right now. Some look like previous problems caused by spaces and can probably be just as easily fixed. For instance:

/bin/sh: /cygdrive/c/Program: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [Makefile:352: _011_basic_t_f5ac.o] Error 127
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The "Author Tests" were handled as I indicated above, so no issues with my potentially dodgy Test::CheckManifest:

t/manifest.t ....................................... skipped: Author t
+ests not required for installation
t/pod-coverage.t ................................... skipped: Author t
+ests not required for installation
t/pod.t ............................................ skipped: Author t
+ests not required for installation
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This further strengthens my argument for not including those Test::* modules as prerequisites. I also note that Test::Pod::Coverage is not mentioned in Manifest.PL but is used in t/pod-coverage.t.

The final few lines of make test output were:

Files=20, Tests=13, 59 wallclock secs ( 0.03 usr  0.01 sys + 14.46 cus
+r 16.56 csys = 31.06 CPU)
Result: FAIL
Failed 15/20 test programs. 0/13 subtests failed.
make: *** [Makefile:926: test_dynamic] Error 255
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It's Friday morning in my timezone and I have $work today. I can probably spend more time on this over the weekend.

kcott, the immediate cause is that C/C++ compilers are not detected. And possibly errors because of more quoting problems.

it's obvious that I need to handle quoting commands and parameters properly. I will follow anonmonk's suggestion if your \Q \E proves not robust enough.

System C and C++ compiler must be detected properly. For locally-built perl.exe finding the default C-compiler is as easy as $Config{cc} but for C++ is not. For downloaded perl.exe, I have no idea where $Config{cc} will point to! I will also make a basic/preliminary test to check quotes and to check compilers.

Secondly, I have no idea how to affect Makefile.PL vars in windows (for specifying CC,CXX,LD), in the same way I do it in bash:

CC=/usr/local/gcc84/bin/gcc84 CXX=/usr/local/gcc84/bin/g++84 LD=/usr/l
+ocal/gcc84/bin/gcc84 perl Makefile.PL
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A workaround is, after perl Makefile.PL, to try to modify config/Inline-CUDA.conf

If all else fails I will have to resort to prompting the user during installation. Any opinions on that style?

Thanks for your time spent and valuable feedback. I am not in a hurry, please work on it in your own pace.

bw, bliako

There's 15 failed tests ("Failed 15/20 test programs."): I'll need to go through each to find the actual problems.

If all are simply quoting uses, then the solution is straightforward (if a little tedious to implement across the board). Let's see how that pans out before worrying about config modifications and the like.

I recall you specified a minimum Perl version of v5.6. I've checked https://perldoc.perl.org/5.6.0/functions/quotemeta and https://perldoc.perl.org/5.6.0/perlop; quotemeta, \Q and \E are all available in that version, so no issues there.

"If all else fails I will have to resort to prompting the user during installation. Any opinions on that style?"

As I said, let's wait and see if secondary options are necessary; however, my general "opinions on that style" are:

• I don't, as a rule, like it. On a number of occasions, I've started what I expected to be a fairly long-running installation, gone off to do something else while it runs, then returned ten or so minutes later only to find that, two seconds after I walked away from the screen, it prompted: "Specify location of whatever [/usr/bin/whatever]?" or something similar.
• There are cases where it simply can't be avoided.
• I have (reluctantly) used it myself in production code.
• Where it has been necessary, I have tried to indicate early on that user intervention will be required.

"Thanks for your time spent and valuable feedback. I am not in a hurry, please work on it in your own pace."

No worries. I am rather eager to see how this works.

I have, in fact, spent most of this week (at $work) modifying modules and repeatedly going through the make cycle, tweaking tests to reflect the changes. While I'm happy to do this, "All work and no play makes Ken a dull boy.", so I need a break. As I said this morning, I can probably look into this further over the weekend. [Current lockdown restrictions means that I'm not even allowed guests in my home, so I'm certainly free to do this work.]

— Ken

Note from the future: ExtUtils::CppGuess works great for finding a C++ compiler. Inline::CUDA doesn't appear to be on CPAN. If one wanted to put it there, you'd want to make an Alien::CUDA to capture detecting CUDA. Then Inline::CUDA could just depend on that, and rely on everything already existing.

apropos Test::CheckManifest being a requirement, I was just scanning all files for external packages and I saw that in t/manifest.t created by module-starter

#!perl
use 5.006;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Test::More;

unless ( $ENV{RELEASE_TESTING} ) {
    plan( skip_all => "Author tests not required for installation" );
}

my $min_tcm = 0.9;
eval "use Test::CheckManifest $min_tcm";
plan skip_all => "Test::CheckManifest $min_tcm required" if $@;

ok_manifest();
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The issue isn't so much that module-starter adds a use Test::CheckManifest to t/manifest.t; rather, it's that you added Test::CheckManifest under PREREQ_PM in Makefile.PL (module-starter doesn't do that).

I was questioning the inclusion of Test::CheckManifest in Makefile.PL, not its presence in t/manifest.t. I could tell (by inspection) that Test::CheckManifest in Makefile.PL would be a problem: I force-installed Test::CheckManifest to circumvent that issue.

Take a look at "Re: Perl tools for making code better" for an example of my equivalent of manifest.t, along with some related information.

— Ken

this will be useful, thanks